Very Bad Archive
Picasso's Guernica
The Guernicans
A horse was on fire in the yard below.
Its wound refracting time and shadow--
Screaming at what? I couldn't see.
Convergence recalls dark symmetry,
And on the shallow stage we find
A proximate place undone by light.
Unmade by phantasms of the night,
Silver flicker and tremendous flame,
An ashen body's plunge reveals its pulp.
Affixed with blinding fright,
She utters guttural bawl
Feet shuffle through timber and straw
Fractured limbs lay low, trampled by hooves
Open eyes that burn, a mouth up-turned--
A warrior's wail is silenced in stone.
Despite the night, the flight, and screams that come from wounding light,
A horse is on fire in the yard below.
A flower grows, planting hope in blood
Spilled by no one I know. I was still in my sheets,
Reaching back but nothing beneath me
The walls ash-white, a siren in my throat.
Hold on tight. The ground is coming.
The cry, the neigh, the fleeing steps, everything is quelled.
Half-sunken in and no one to thank.
With the beaten child Pasiphae goes mad,
Her mouth about to kiss the beast she does not see--
The curtain felt cold as it brushed my forearm,
And my fingers froze to the lamp.
The Guernicans has published since joining on 30/11/99. Read more of The's terrible poetry at the anthology. Here are three of The's latest works: